The students of the Eindhoven Van Maerlantlyceum have already cast their votes during elections at school. Almost a quarter of the 200 students who participated voted for GL/PvdA (GroenLinks/PvdA, green left party/labour party).
The result is a precursor to the real elections on Wednesday. High school has recently paid a lot of attention to politics. The students find themes such as climate and education important. “I hope that there will not be many right-wing votes today, but I hope that Frans Timmermans will get many votes,” says a youngster who is worried about more extremism in the country.
Opinions
The students are not really allowed to vote yet (only from the age of 18 onwards). Yet the election has a purpose. “We are already involved in politics and we see from each other what we find important. We mainly talk about the climate and what it will look like in the future. Opinions really differ on that subject”, Bernice, one of the organisers of the elections, says.
“The result has no further impact, but we want to see whether we can measure up to the real elections. Do our choices correspond, or not at all. We therefore keep a close eye on the polls to compare our results”, co-organiser Carlijn explains.
Minimal differences
After GroenLinks/PvdA, D66 (democrats, 17.4 per cent) was popular. This was followed by VVD (people’s party for freedom and democracy, 14.5 per cent) and FvD (forum for democracy, 9.4 per cent). A striking detail is that no one voted for Pieter Omtzigt’s NSC (new social contract). A party that, according to polls, will win many seats. This also applies to a lesser extent to the CDA (Christian democrats) and the BBB (farmer-citizen movement). They both received 1.4 per cent of the votes. “I actually expected that our school would mainly vote right-wing”, one of the students explains.
“I already expected that things would be very different at our school. They choose either very left or very right. So VVD or GroenLinks/PvdA. That is what we have noticed here at school”, Carlijn says.
The polling stations for the Tweede Kamerverkiezingen (house of representatives elections) opened this morning.
Source: Studio040
Translated by: Bob
